The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

?php
>

Friday, May 8, 2015

Iran's agenda is clear. It
wishes to use its growing regional network to control the region, and
use its proxies to indirectly attack any countries that stand in its way
-- all the while portraying itself as a reasonable partner for the U.S.
and the West in the war against the Islamic State.

The Islamic Republic's aggression goes largely ignored.

The international community is failing to respond to Iran's weapons and terrorism networks.

In recent years, Iran's networks have been expanding significantly, most often with deadly results for the region.

While Iran's nuclear program is the focus of intense global
attention, the international community frequently overlooks the
sophisticated Iranian transnational weapons smuggling and terrorism
networks, currently fueling wars and instability across the Middle East.

Weapons ships disguised as cargo vessels, Iranian airlines that carry
arms, and ground convoys ferrying missiles, rockets, guns, and
ammunition are all used to arm members of Iran's regional network.

On
March 5, 2014, Israel's Navy boarded the Klos-C in the Red Sea, and
found it to be smuggling munitions from Iran to Gaza, including a large
number of M-302 missiles, found concealed under bags of Portland cement.
(Image source: IDF)

The lack of attention to these acts of aggression is quite startling
in light of the scope of destructive influence they have, not just for
the Middle East, but for international security as a whole.

Today, it is possible to look at a number of battles raging in the
region; what connects them to one another in this network more often
than not is the spurring influence of Iran.

The Quds Force, a shadowy elite unit of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary
Guards Corps (IRGC) that operates overseas, runs the network. Iranian
weapons, terror funds, military training and instructors now have more
reach than ever, and the IRGC has been consolidating its presence in
South America.

As a number of Middle Eastern regimes implode, leaving behind failed
states and sectarian strife, Iran has taken advantage of the chaos to
exert deep control over a growing number of Arab capitals, including
Sana'a, Baghdad, Damascus, and Beirut -- as well as several regions in
Arab countries -- and is presumably not stopping there. In Yemen, the
powerful Iran-backed Shi'ite Houthi militia recently toppled the
government. This proxy in Yemen could enable Iran to seize control of
the crucial shipping lanes at the chokepoints on either side of the
Saudi peninsula, at the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab El-Mandeb Strait.

To be sure, not all things are going Iran's way. Recent battlefield
setbacks for the Assad regime are bad news for Tehran, as illustrated by
a recent hasty visit by the Syrian defense minister to Iran for consultations and instructions.

Nowhere is Iranian intervention more evident than in Syria, where
Iran has acted as the Assad regime's life support system, helping to
fuel a conflict that has killed more than 250,000 people and created
more than seven million refugees.

Iran views the Assad regime as a key regional base, and a strategic bridge to its chief proxy: Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Iran's support for Assad enables this conflict, the most deadly in
the world just now, to roll on month after month. That conflict, in
turn, is what has directly led to the mushrooming of radical Sunni
groups, especially the Islamic State.

Iran's Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, the most heavily armed terrorist
entity in the world, is fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the Assad
regime's forces. Together with Iran, Hezbollah has been trying to set up
terrorist bases in southern Syria in order to initiate cross-border attacks on Israel.

Tehran has not only been using its Quds Force network to send guided
missiles and rockets to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon; it has also been
paying Hamas tens of millions of dollars to continue digging tunnels
from Gaza into Israel, for use in future cross-border attacks to murder
and kidnap Israelis.

Iran's agenda is clear. It wishes to use its growing regional network
to control the region, and use its proxies to indirectly attack any
countries that stand in its way -- all the while portraying itself as a
reasonable partner for the U.S. and the West in the war against the
Islamic State.

While the international community has largely remained silent over
Iran's exuberant meddling in the region, local Middle Eastern actors
threatened by these actions have been responding.

A Saudi-led Sunni coalition of Arab air forces launched an air war in
recent weeks against the Houthi militia in Yemen, to try to stop their
advance, so far with limited success. Houthi rebels, striking back,
launched mortars and Katyusha rockets on a Saudi Arabian town this week, hitting schools and residential buildings, and forcing the Saudis to shut down a local airport.

According to international media reports, which have not been
confirmed by Israel, recently the skies over Syria are said to have seen
Israeli fighter jets covertly target shipments of Iranian and Syrian
weapons destined for Hezbollah in Lebanon -- one of a series of alleged
Israeli strikes targeting advanced arms being smuggled to Hezbollah.

Actors other than just the regional ones appear to be responding, as well. At the end of April, the US Navy confronted Iranian ships
carrying weapons for the Houthis in Yemen, forcing them to turn back.
As the P5+1 appear to continue weaving together a poor nuclear deal that
will leave open the gates to nuclear weapons for Iran, the Islamic
Republic's aggression goes largely ignored.

U.S. President Barack Obama prepares to host Gulf
Cooperation Council at the White House and then at Camp David • "We have
to make sure any transfer of weapons to anyone in the region won't
undermine Israel's ability to defend itself," one official says.

U.S. President Barack Obama
with Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud

|

Photo credit: AP

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to
make a renewed push next week to help Gulf allies create a region-wide
defense system to guard against Iranian missiles, as he seeks to allay
their anxieties over any nuclear deal with Tehran, according to U.S.
sources.

The offer could be accompanied by enhanced
security commitments, new arms sales -- including technology previously
only offered to Israel -- and more joint military exercises, U.S.
officials say, as Obama tries to reassure Gulf Arab countries that
Washington is not abandoning them.

Following U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's
visit to Saudi Arabia this week, officials say several arms sales are
likely, including resupplying bombs and missiles depleted in the
Saudi-led air assault in Yemen and in strikes against Islamic State
militants in the U.S.-led air campaign in Syria.

According to a report in the Washington Times,
the U.S. administration is weighing whether to offer Riyadh GBU-28
bunker-buster bombs, which it has until now provided only to Israel -- a
move that would conflict with a long-standing American commitment to
Israel's regional military superiority as per a 2008 congressional
mandate.

"We have to make sure any transfer of weapons
to anyone in the region won't undermine Israel's ability to defend
itself," one official said in the report.

If the U.S. decides to supply the Gulf States
with the GBU-28 bombs, it could avoid violating the mandate by offering
Israel the newer and stronger GBU-57. However, it is reluctant to share
the technology with any other nation, including Israel.

Washington is likely to stand firm on its
decision to withhold from Gulf allies the purchase of Lockheed's new
top-flight F-35 fighter jet, another U.S. official said. The F-35 has
been promised to Israel, with delivery of the stealth warplane set to
begin next year.

At the same time, Kuwait's proposed purchase
of 28 Boeing Co. F/A-18E/F Super Hornet advanced fighter jets, valued at
more than $3 billion, is likely to be discussed, but it is unclear
whether the deal will be finalized in the near future, a U.S. official
said. An announcement is expected in coming weeks, according to people
familiar with the deal.

With little more than a week to go before
Obama hosts the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council -- Bahrain, Kuwait,
Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- at the White
House and then at Camp David, aides are discussing the options in
pre-summit meetings with Arab diplomats. Officials say no final
decisions on possible U.S. proposals have been made.

Obama faces a formidable challenge in deciding
how far to go to sell skeptical Sunni-led allies on his top foreign
policy priority, a final nuclear deal with Shiite Iran due by a June 30
deadline. Failure to placate them could further strain ties, though
additional defense obligations would carry the risk of the United States
being drawn into new Middle East conflicts.

Obama issued the invitation to the GCC to
attend the May 13-14 summit after Iran and six world powers reached a
framework agreement last month that would give Tehran sanctions relief
for reining in its nuclear program.

Gulf Arab neighbors, including key U.S. ally
Saudi Arabia, worry that Iran will not be deterred from a nuclear bomb
and will be flush with cash from unfrozen assets to fund proxies and
expand its influence in countries such as Syria, Yemen and Lebanon.

'Two-way street'

U.S. officials with knowledge of the internal
discussions concede that Obama is under pressure to calm Arab fears by
offering strengthened commitments.

"It's a time to see what things might be required to be formalized," a senior U.S. official said.

Obama is all but certain to stop short of a
full security treaty with Saudi Arabia or other Gulf nations as that
would require approval by the Republican-controlled Senate and risk
stoking tensions with Washington's main Middle East ally, Israel.

A second U.S. official insisted the summit
would be a "two-way street," with Washington pushing Gulf leaders to
overcome internal rivalries and find ways to collaborate better in their
own defense.

Obama is likely to press Gulf allies to do
more to integrate their disparate militaries and work toward a
long-delayed anti-missile shield against an Iranian ballistic missile
threat, the sources familiar with the discussions said. This could take
the form of a new high-level joint working group led by the Pentagon,
one of the sources said.

Gulf countries have already bought U.S.
missile defense systems such as the Patriot system built by Raytheon Co.
and the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense system built by Lockheed
Martin Corp.

But the Obama administration is now expected
to press them to implement the initiative touted in late 2013 by
then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

The program allows the GCC to purchase
equipment as a bloc and start knitting together radars, sensors and
early warning networks with U.S. assistance but has been held up by
distrust among some of the Gulf monarchies.

The Obama administration is concerned about
shortcomings in the Gulf states' joint operational capacity exposed by a
Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen that has failed to push back
Iran-allied Houthi fighters.

Concrete steps

It was unclear specifically what Washington
would offer the Gulf nations -- which already operate some of the most
evolved U.S.-made weaponry -- to advance the missile shield. Lingering
rifts between GCC members, especially Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates, would need to be put aside before a joint missile system would
be viable.

Experts now believe the time is ripe for greater cooperation because of deteriorating security across the region.

"Missile defense is absolutely critical to the
GCC right now," said Riki Ellison, founder of the nonprofit Missile
Defense Advocacy Alliance.

"They're not as efficient playing separately as they would be all playing as one team," he said.

Wary that Obama might keep any new security
pledges vague, Gulf states have also made clear they want this
translated into concrete steps.

"This summit can't just be a big photo opportunity to pretend everybody's on the same page on Iran," one Arab diplomat said.

Website offers all reports, position papers and updates on the
activities of the New Israel Fund and the organizations it supports.

Im Tirtzu protest

In Tirtzu

Grassroots Zionist student organization Im Tirtzu has launched a new
website called NIF Watch. The website claims to hold all of the
reports, position papers and updates on the activities of the New Israel
Fund (NIF) and the organizations it supports, which have been published
over the years.

According to Im Tirtzu, it also “documents the delegitimization of
Israel caused by the NIF and its partners nationally and
internationally.”

Among other things, the movement states, “the site shows quotations
from the directors of the NIF and the heads of the organizations it
supports calling for IDF soldiers to be put on trial for war crimes,
calling for boycotts and sanctions against Israel, taking legal actions
in court against the State of Israel, and encouraging international
pressure.:

In addition, the site highlights recently published Im Tirtzu
reports, including the one tracing funds from the Ramallah-based
Palestinian organization that funded the reports by Breaking the Silence
and B’Tselem accusing the IDF of crimes during Operation Protective
Edge.

The site also holds reports from past years showing the NIF’s
influence on the Goldstone Report, detailing organizations supported by
the NIF that hound senior IDF commanders and security personnel abroad,
and more.

In 2010, Im Tirtzu launched a campaign to expose the truth about the
New Israel Fund and the effect it and the organizations it supports had
on the State of Israel and its future as a Jewish state.

Matan Peleg, CEO of Im TIrtzu, said: “We are proud to launch the site
to expose the real face of the NIF and the organizations it supports
(B’Tselem, Breaking the Silence, Adalah, ACRI and others). The NIF works
to promote the delegitimization of Israel and endangers the future of
Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. We will continue to do
everything possible for these organizations serving as foreign agents to
cease their undermining of democracy and their jeopardizing the
future.”

Link to the site.Arutz ShevaSource: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/195146#.VUuUGpOzd-8 Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

“They
want others to change, forgetting that it is also they that may have
to change. And without changing, even if the Palestinians will have a
state, they won’t be free. To be free, you must let go of the hate”

“They want others to change, forgetting that it is also they that may have to change. And without changing, even if the Palestinians will have a state, they won’t be free. To be free, you must let go of the hate,” he said.

“The greater the crime, the more money you get,” he said, relaying the story of a Palestinian terrorist whose wedding costs were covered by the PA.

“The Palestinian Authority budget relies heavily on foreign donations. In the year 2012 alone, 16 percent of those foreign donation, $155 million, the money of Norwegian and British taxpayers, among others, was paid to terrorists,” he said.

He said when the Norweigian government, on his request, brought the issue up with the Palestinian government, Palestinian officials’ response was that “stopping those payments would be considered nothing less than betrayal.”

He commented on modern antisemitism in the Middle East, saying, “In Europe, Jews paid the price for not giving up their connection to their God, and in the Middle East, they pay a price for not giving up the connection to their home. An old hate is reborn with a new excuse.”

“Antisemitism is not about Jews, and nothing would be more tragic than to continue to see it as a Jewish issue,” he said.

Deek quipped that others in the Arab community, both among Israeli Arabs, Palestinians and Arabs abroad, have said that either “he’s a masochist or he doesn’t understand the reality he lives in.”

He said he is often asked, in “genuine dialogue”: “Why represent those who are considered to be your enemies. Aren’t you afraid of losing your identity? What is it you are trying to achieve?”

Indeed, his upbringing includes an extraordinary Israeli mishmash of ethnic and cultural identities. “I was a Christian Orthodox kid in a French Catholic school with a majority of Muslim students, in the Jewish country in the Arab Middle East,” he said, to audience laughter. “And nothing seemed more normal.”

And while he boasted one of the “best qualities of life” for Arabs in the region, he lamented the ever-growing persecution of Christians in the Middle East.

“Outside Israel, Easter celebrations have become a rare sight … Christians were driven out of Mosul in Iraq … [They were] put to flight in Syria. The last church in Afghanistan was destroyed in 2010. Thirty Christians were beheaded in Libya just a few days ago. And in Gaza, bishops are beaten up and Christian symbols are forbidden.”

When Latifa ibn-Ziaten’s son, a French-Moroccan soldier, was
murdered three years ago in a terror attack in Toulouse, she decided to track
down the murderer. Since then, she has been educating Muslim youths from
immigrant neighborhoods in France to know the “other” and has even visited
Israel with them. “I will do anything to stop the next murderer”, she says

Latifa ibn-Ziaten
from France is the missing link. Against the burgeoning European anti-Semitism
she offers a way to penetrate the wall of hatred that has grown in the
immigrant neighborhoods in the suburbs of Paris. Yes, she is Muslim. And no,
don’t let her traditional head covering mislead you: ibn-Ziaten is deeply
imbedded within the French experience. This courageous woman, by means of the
NGO that she established, offers a difficult but effective way to cope long-term
with the well-oiled ISIS propaganda machine. And in addition, to give the
French a way to raise their eyes, to look at themselves in the mirror and say
that not all is lost for the republic.

How did it
all begin? Until three years ago Latifa ibn-Ziaten was an anonymous woman from
Morocco who immigrated to France at a young age, became a citizen, married,
started a family and quietly, contentedly, reared five children. The process of
socialization for her and her family reached a highpoint when her eldest son Imad
enlisted in the French army and took a paratroopers’ training course. In a
photograph with a red beret it’s difficult to tell the difference between him
and an IDF soldier.

And then
everything exploded. In March 2002, Muhammad Merah, an unemployed youth from
Toulouse, undertook a murderous mission. Merah, the son of an immigrant family
from North Africa with a criminal past, returned to France after a long journey
in Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Middle East and Bosnia. During his travels he
became radicalized in al-Qaida training camps, where he was trained for the
murderous attack in Toulouse. His first victims were two soldiers in the town
of Mountauban, near Paris. One of them was Imad, ibn-Zaitan’s son. Merah,
riding on a motorcycle, shot him and his friend point blank.

What
happened there in the moments before the murder is well known. The terrorist Merah’s
Go-Pro camera, mounted on his chest, documented everything exactly in chilling
detail.

“Are you a
soldier?” he asked Imad, “Are you in the army?” he did not wait for an answer.

A second
afterward a shot was heard. Imad fell to the ground lying in a pool of his
blood. In the recording were heard calls of “Allahu Akbar” again and
again and more gunshots, and then Merah turned the motorcycle around and fled
the scene.

At this
point, the police already knew about Merah, the motorcycle and the weapon. He
was also being tracked by French intelligence. But they had not connected the
dots in time. In the pursuit that was initiated following the murder of the
soldiers – Merah was ahead of them. Two days afterward he had already
identified the next target. His victims were five Jewish children of the Torah
Treasure School from Toulouse. Merah ambushed them outside of the gate of the
school and shot them one after another.

This week,
three years and two months after the murder in Toulouse, I met ibn-Ziaten at a
reception in her honor in the house of Patrick Maisonnave,
the French ambassador in Israel. The atmosphere on the balcony by the sea in
Yaffo was almost like home. We shook hands. She proved to be an impressive
woman of disarming simplicity and a way with words.

This is her
second visit to Israel, this time, in connection with the Imad ibn-Ziaten for
the Youth and Peace NGO, which she established in memory of her son. She was
accompanied by 17 children and youths, the youngest of them nine years old. All
of them are children of French immigrant families. Their educational journey in
Israel was entitled “Living Together”. A sort of “Birthright” journey – but in
the opposite direction: its goal is to bring the message back to Europe, to penetrate
the immigrant neighborhoods, the wall of ignorance, hatred and crime by means
of the direct experiences that they were exposed to during the visit.

Easy prey
in the neighborhoods

This journey
to Israel is the climax of a deep personal process that began forty days after
the murder of her son Imad, ibn-Ziaten explains. “I felt then that I could no
longer sit at home. I had to get to the place where I Imad was murdered and to
memorialize him in some way. A friend suggested that I establish an NGO”, she recalls.

“My husband
and the children did not want me to go to the place, but I insisted”,
ibn-Ziaten recounts. “I came there but did not find anything except a blood
stain. I felt a terrible emptiness. I screamed. I yelled loudly.I hoped that someone would come. A policeman,
perhaps. Maybe a taxi driver. No one came. At that moment I felt that I must
see where Muhammad Merah came from. Where the one who murdered my son grew up”.

Ibn-Ziaten
continued and described how she came to the immigrant neighborhood where the
one who murdered her son lived. “I searched and I asked about Muhammad Merah.
And then some youths approached me and said to me: ‘Say, don’t you read the
newspapers? Don’t you know who Muhammad Merah is? He is a martyr. He is a shaheed.
He is a hero. He got France back on her feet”.

“At that
moment”, ibn-Ziaten acknowledges, I felt that they were murdering Imad again. I
turned to these youths and said: ‘Merah murdered my son’, and they answered me:
‘We are sorry that you are Imad’s mother. If Muhammad had known that Imad was
Muslim, he would not have murdered him’. I answered them ‘Muslim or not – you
don’t take someone’s life. Muhammad Merah was no martyr and no hero. He was a
murderer’. Their answer was: ‘But France has forgotten us. France has not given
us anything”.

Shocked and
hurting, ibn-Ziaten decided that she must do something. I decided that I must
work with these youths to prevent the next Muhammad Merah. I understood that I
must help them so that there would not be another mother to feel that pain that
I feel today”.

What is
the main problem of these youths that would create the next murderer?

“These youths come from broken families, some
are criminals; they have no values and no education. When I came to France at
the age of 17 from Morocco, we were a poor family but rich in values. I brought
up five wonderful children.But the
children in the immigrant neighborhoods did not get the warmth, the love and
the education that Imad and my children had. They grow up in a ghetto of
immigrants with the feeling that they have no place in French society. They say
that when they go out, they are checked all the time and are asked for their
identification card. They feel that they are suspected and disparaged”.

Ibn-Ziaten
explains that this situation is fertile ground for the development of the next
murderer. “When people grow up without education, with a feeling of deprecation
and when there is no joy in their hearts – it is very easy to fill them with
hatred. They are easy prey for someone who wants to penetrate their hearts and spread
hatred. That’s why we must work with them from a young age. To open the
immigrant neighborhoods to the wider world and break down the wall of hatred
before it is built”.

After three
years of living this matter personally, can you identify the moment when
Muhammad Merah became a murderer?

“Yes. The
moment when he was put into French prison.This is where he became radicalized. French prison is a dangerous place.
The young people who are put in prison find themselves totally alone, they
almost don’t sleep, they go mad, they are exposed to hatred in the prison and
when they leave it they are much more dangerous to society”.

Battling
ignorance

Ibn-Ziaten’s
assessments are the same conclusions that the French authorities came to
following the slaughter of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo and the carnage
at the kosher market in Paris. That indeed, the main process of radicalization
that the attackers, Amedy Coulibalyand theKouachibrothers underwent,
had its roots in the French prison. That is where they also became acquainted
with each other and were exposed to the indoctrination of hatred from Islamist
preachers. The process that ibn-Ziaten is now trying to inculcate, is not only intended
to prevent them from getting to prison, but also to provide them with social
tools to become acquainted with the “other”, Israel and the Jews and to
immunize them before they are exposed to the malignant hatred. And this is not
at all simple to do. Arthur Butbul, who immigrated to Israel two years ago from
France, and studies today in the Mikve Yisrael school, met ibn-Ziaten’s
delegation of children, who are children of French immigrants. “These are
totally normal children”, he says, “but even they did not know anything about
Israel. Nothing at all. They had never heard about Operation Protective Edge,
hadn’t heard about the tunnels, did not know what kassam rockets are. They
thought it is a desert here, that Israelis are all racists, that there is segregation
between Jews and Arabs and that Israelis are busy all day long killing
Palestinians. From their point of view, everything is Gaza. This is what they
absorb from their surroundings, especially from television. The visit here has
opened their eyes and has done them only good”, says Butbul.

It was a
complex journey for those youths. Along with a meeting people of their own age,
they also visited the Western Wall, Yad vaShem, the Temple Mount and the
Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. Their exposure to the Palestinian side was
important and proved itself – especially so that they would see with their own
eyes that the reality on the ground is different and much more complex than the
one-dimensional mental picture that had been built up in their minds before the
visit here.

I asked them
if they would like to visit again. “Of course”, they answered, “It’s fun here”.
On their return, the youths are expected to go from school to school and talk
about what they saw. This is no small thing. They are now small soldiers in the
war against ignorance and anti-Semitism and for tolerance. In Israel of 2015,
which does not enjoy the kind of public relations benefits of Israel in 1948,
Exodus, Paul Newman and the romantic idea of the kibbutz – it is a big thing. It
is indeed a big thing.

The past
three years have not been easy for Latifa ibn-Ziaten. Her work has taken her
all over France and beyond. This process has also created a sense of closeness
between ibn-Ziaten and the Jewish community. Last January, after the shooting
attack at Charlie Hebdo and the kosher market, when France was shaken to the
depths of its soul, one of the emotional high points was the candle lighting in
a Paris synagogue. Two women lit 17 Candles were lit in memory of the victims.
One of them had a traditional Jewish head-covering and the other had a
traditional Muslim head-covering. The first was Eva Sandler, whose husband
Yonatan and two sons, Aryeh and Gavriel, were murdered by Muhammad Merah. The
other woman, the Muslim one, was ibn-Ziaten. She had planned to fly that
week-end to Morocco to a sport event on behalf of handicapped children, but she
ultimately chose to participate in the memorial ceremony.

Do you
see Muhammad Merah as the first in a series of terrorists from what we today call
ISIS?

It doesn’t matter. At that time, we did not know what ISIS is. We still
don’t know the word ISIS. Then, there was al-Qaeda, today there is ISIS. We
must be careful; we must close ranks and work with all our strength against
radicalization and barbarism”.

Nearly a year since the signing of the Hamas-Fatah
"national reconciliation" deal, the two groups are no nearer to bridging
their differences and tackling the challenges Palestinians face • Fatah
official: Hamas does not want division to end.

In recent weeks, many envoys have beaten a
path to Gaza's door: Representatives from Qatar, Turkey, the United
Nations, the European Union and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter have
all visited or tried to visit.

Yet the result has been the same: no success
in reconciling Hamas, the Islamic terrorist group that has controlled
Gaza since 2007, and Fatah, the more secular, Western-backed party that
runs the Palestinian Authority from the West Bank.

Nearly a year since Hamas and Fatah signed a
"national reconciliation" agreement, the two are no nearer to bridging
their differences or tackling the mounting challenges Palestinians face.

Fatah is convinced that Hamas, which fought a
war with Israel in Gaza nine months ago, is trying to carve out an
Islamist fiefdom in the 360 square kilometers of the Gaza Strip. Hamas
goads Fatah about its unwillingness to hold elections out of fear it
will lose and Hamas will end up in full control.

Such deep internal divisions are in part the
reason why Israel repeats that it has no Palestinian partner to deal
with, making a return to peace negotiations near impossible.

"Hamas does not want the division to end,"
said senior Fatah official Amin Maqboul. He said Hamas, whose leader
Khaled Mashaal lives in self-imposed exile in Qatar, has its own plan
for Gaza.

"We know that Hamas has never been in favor of
a Palestinian state," he said, suggesting that rather than forging
unity with the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the group is determined to
create an Islamist "emirate" on the Mediterranean.

For its part, Hamas says Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas shows no real inclination towards
reconciliation, sending envoys to Gaza rather than coming himself from
the West Bank. His large home in Gaza, not far from the sea, has been
turned into an office for cabinet ministers and a venue for angry
rallies.

"There is nothing more we can do, no more that we can do to facilitate reconciliation," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri.

Foreign diplomats express deep frustration
with the situation and tend to find blame on both sides: Hamas is
authoritarian and difficult to pin down, but Abbas and Fatah seem
inclined to wash their hands of Gaza, too.

"You can't impose a solution from the outside. These guys have got to sort it out themselves," said one European diplomat.

Gaza political analyst Hani Habib sees a dangerous future.

"Seven years on, we are closer to having two
[Palestinian] states, one in Gaza and one in the West Bank, not the two
states of Palestine and Israel," he said.

The impact of the stand-off is widespread, but
in two areas it is particularly problematic: It is stalling rebuilding
in Gaza after the war and it is undermining democratic legitimacy, with
the last Palestinian elections held nearly a decade ago.

A U.N.-brokered agreement with Israel to allow
reconstruction materials into Gaza, where 130,000 homes were damaged or
destroyed in last year's war, requires the PA to take back control of
border security and administration in Gaza.

But there is no agreement between Hamas and
the PA on such cooperation. As a result there is still only a trickle of
reconstruction goods and equipment flowing into Gaza, a source of
intense aggravation to Gazans.

Meanwhile, the question of Palestinian
elections will not go away. Hamas narrowly won the last legislative vote
in January 2006, although its government only lasted until mid-2007,
when a Fatah-Hamas conflict blew up and the Islamists seized Gaza.

At the same time, Abbas has been Palestinian president since 2005, even though his term theoretically expired in 2009.

Now 80, he has indicated that he will not run
for another term, but he has also set no date for legislative and
presidential elections, saying the time is not right.

The concern is that Hamas is too popular. A
student council election last month at Birzeit University near Ramallah
was handily won by Hamas. Another election at An-Najah University in
Nablus was canceled, although officials said it was not because of the
Hamas threat.

Since then, Hamas supporters have teased Fatah
about its reluctance to hold elections. Carter and other envoys have
urged Palestinian leaders not to abandon the democratic process.

But quietly diplomats also acknowledge that if
parliamentary and presidential elections were to be held and Hamas won
-- as is possible -- it would be extremely difficult to engage, with
Hamas listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and EU.

And it would rule out any return to negotiations with
Israel's newly elected right-wing government, putting a two-state
solution to the conflict even further out of reach.

It is most important to keep
on challenging these would-be censors, so that people with Kalashnikov
rifles do not make our customs and laws.

One of the false presumptions of our time is that people on the
political left are motivated by good intentions even when they do bad
things, while people on the political right are motivated by bad
intentions even when they do good things.

When people prefer to focus on the motives of the victims rather
than on the motives of the attackers, they will ignore the single most
important matter: that an art exhibition, or free speech, has been
targeted.

It does not matter if you are right-wing or left-wing, or
American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian or French. These particularities may
matter greatly and be endlessly interesting to people in the countries
in question. But they matter not a jot to ISIS or their
fellow-travellers. What these people are trying to do is to enforce
Islamic blasphemy laws across the entire world. That is all that
matters.

ISIS appears to have inspired its first terrorist attack in the
United States: in Garland, Texas. This item may have slipped the
attention of many people because as is so often the case today, much of
the reporting and commentary has got caught up on other, supplementary
issues.

The supplementary issues are first, that the attack targeted a
competition set up to show images of what people thought Muhammad may
have looked like. Then, there is the identity of the people who
organized the exhibition and spoke at it.

Bosch
Fawstin (second from left), the cartoonist who won the Muhammad Art
Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Texas this week, is presented with his
prize by (from left to right) Robert Spencer, Geert Wilders and Pamela
Geller. (Image source: Atlas Shrugs blog)

Before coming to this, let us just return to that main issue. Since
January, the idea that ISIS-like groups can inspire people to carry out
murderous attacks in Paris and Copenhagen has come to be accepted. But
that this can happen in Texas, of all places, could yet have an even
worse "chilling effect" on free speech than the attacks in Paris and
Copenhagen. No European country has the constitutional commitment to
free speech of the United States. And Texas is not stuck in the moral
relativism and fearful multiculturalism of most European countries.

There will be a feeling, post-Garland, that if ISIS can strike in
Texas, it can strike anyplace. The entire developed world is therefore a
potential site for an attack from ISIS. Although no one will put his
hands up and surrender, neither will anyone be likely to draw attention
to himself by saying or doing anything that might displease such
homicidal censors.

The presence of strong security forces clearly helps to prevent
attacks, but it is worth remembering that ISIS will use the opportunity
of such "failed" attacks to come up with other ways of operating, which
they will judge more likely to succeed.

What is most striking, however, is how silent many of the usual defenders of free speech have been.

Undoubtedly this is partly to do with the idea, becoming ingrained,
that if you draw Mohammed or publish such images, you have, in some way,
got it coming to you. This is an appalling pass to have come to, but it
is in just such way that censorship and self-censorship are allowed to
embed themselves.

Very few people say that they will not draw a historical figure
because they are scared. But attack by attack, the feeling is growing
among the majority of the media and others who have declined to publish
such images, that they have failed. So to hide that shame, they tell
themselves there is something provocative and even irresponsible in
challenging people who would challenge the freedom speech.

One might still get the support of those who cherish free speech if
one were accidentally to publish a cartoon of Mohammed, but not if you
did so deliberately, and in full knowledge of the consequences. But of
course, it is precisely after facing the consequences of challenging
these would-be censors that it is most important to keep on challenging
them, so that people with Kalashnikov rifles do not make our customs and
laws.

As people come up with ever more elaborate ways to justify what they
probably know in their hearts to be contemptible, it becomes harder and
harder for them to change course.

Then there is the other only-occasionally-spoken-about supplementary
issue, which may well be at the root of the difference between the
assaults in Europe and the response to the attempted Texas assault. The
January massacre at the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo
undoubtedly woke up a portion of the general public in the West because
the victims were cartoonists and editors at a "left-wing" magazine. That
is, Charlie Hebdo stood for a type of robust secular,
anti-establishment type of French politics, which a portion of the left
worldwide could recognize as its own.

This stands in contrast to the comparative lack of solidarity after threats to the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, in the wake of the 2005 Mohammed cartoons affair. To varying degrees, Jyllands-Posten
was described as a "conservative" paper. In this context, unsure
whether "conservative" meant anything from "establishment" all the way
to "racist," there was often suspected to be some dark, ulterior motive
for publishing cartoons of the founder of Islam.

There is, however, no escaping such smears. Plenty of people proved
willing, in the wake of the Paris attack, to smear the murdered
cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo as far-right-wing or racist.

The organizers at the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI),
Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer, are not left-wing journalists but
conservative activists; and because the Dutch politician Geert Wilders
spoke at the opening of the exhibition, that added a layer of complexity
for people who like labeling actions with political valences, rather
than just seeing actions as apart from them. It seems clear, however,
from the pattern of condemnations on one side and silence on the other,
that a cartoonist may be worthy of defense if he is associated with a
left-wing organization, but not if he is associated with a right-wing
one.

Of course, this idea goes to one of the false presumptions of our
time: ­that people on the political left are motivated by good
intentions even when they do bad things, while people on the political
right are motivated by bad intentions even when they do good things. So a
cartoon promoted by Charlie Hebdo may be thought to be
provocative in a constructive way, whereas one promoted by AFDI can only
be thought if as being provocative in an unconstructive way. Whether
people are willing to admit it or not, this is one of the main problems
that underlies the reaction to the Texas attack.

Such a distinction is, needless to say, a colossal mistake. When
people prefer to focus on the motives of the victims rather than on the
motives of the attackers, they will ignore the single most important
matter: that an art exhibition, or free speech, has been targeted. The
rest is narcissism and slow-learning.

It does not matter if you are right wing or left wing. It does not
matter if you are American, Danish, Dutch, Belgian or French, or whether
you are from Texas or Copenhagen. These particularities may matter
greatly and be endlessly interesting to people in the countries in
question. But they matter not a jot to ISIS or their fellow-travellers.
What these people are trying to do is to enforce Islamic blasphemy laws
across the entire world.

That is all that matters. If we forget this or lose sight of it, not only will we lose free speech, we will lose, period.

In
half a century, astonishingly, we’ve come full circle and achieved the
exact inverse of what the Free Speech Movement claimed it intended. What
began as lawless civil disobedience now exploits campus regulations to
rescind from others the same rights these erstwhile campus radicals once
demanded for themselves.

As
the 2014-2015 school year draws to a close, it’s worth noting a
significant anniversary in higher education that’s gone largely
unnoticed by the majority of the press and broadcast media. It’s been 50
years since University of California Berkeley student Mario Savio,
protesting university crackdowns on political advocacy by student
organizations, famously climbed the steps of Sproul Hall and gave his
impassioned speech that defined the original Free Speech Movement.

“There's
a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious -- makes you
so sick at heart -- that you can't take part. You can't even passively
take part. And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the
wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make
it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the
people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be
prevented from working at all.”

He descended the steps a legendary hero of the left and the modern politicized university environment was born.

Since
then, we’ve seen five continuous decades of increasing and unrelenting
progressive policies taking root and reaching full flower in academia.
The result, unfortunately, is anything but “free speech.” Instead, we
have achieved the absolute antithesis of what Savio once championed: the
enforcement of political correctness, speech codes, trigger warnings,
free speech zones, safe zones, and the suppression of
arbitrarily-labeled “hate speech” or anything that supposedly offends
someone or deviates from the current hegemonic political orthodoxy.

In
half a century, astonishingly, we’ve come full circle and achieved the
exact inverse of what the Free Speech Movement claimed it intended. What
began as lawless civil disobedience now exploits campus regulations to
rescind from others the same rights these erstwhile campus radicals once
demanded for themselves. In other words: the oppressed have become the
oppressors. Talk about Freudian reaction formation!

Today,
at college campuses across the country, we regularly read of bullying,
intimidation, shouting down opposing points of view, and dis-invitations
delivered to accomplished speakers representing unpopular views.
Examples of free speech outrages in academia are legion. Here are but a
mere smattering from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education’s
legal case website: Marquette University Faculty Member Facing Loss of
Tenure for Opinions on his Blog; Pro-Palestinian Group Fined for
“Offensive” Political Expression; Unconstitutional Punishment of
Sorority Over “Inappropriate” Theme Party; Citrus College student
threatened with removal from campus by an administrator for asking a
fellow student to sign a petition protesting NSA surveillance of
American citizens.

Without
delving into the details of these individual cases, the overriding
principle is clear and sacrosanct: free speech rights exist precisely to
defend unpopular speech. Popular speech, after all, needs no defending.
On campuses across the country today, the freedom to speak one’s mind
has been redefined as the freedom to repeat the tired, worn,
passionless, approved slogans of the powers-that-be, or else.

Or
else, what? The answer seems to be the sort of shame, scorn, derision,
shunning, “outing” and finger-pointing that terrifies young adults
desperate to fit in, and which we saw exhibited at Oberlin College last
week as campus feminists hung posters naming individual students who
sponsored a talk by Christina Hoff Sommers as being perpetuators of
“rape culture.”

The
original campus agitators weren’t afraid of the consequences of civil
disobedience. Where is that same passion and courage among today’s
undergraduates? College students seeking inspiration and a worthy,
necessary cause to believe in and march for need look no further than
the first major campus protest movement. It’s time for a new, revived
Free Speech Movement on campus, to finally establish and uphold the
principles promoted by the first, unfinished movement.

To combat the steady erosion of our liberties, political scientist Charles Murray, in his soon-to-be-released book By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission,
argues that the time has come for citizens to reclaim their protected
right through targeted acts of civil disobedience by challenging out of
control enforcement by overzealous and overreaching authority, supported
by the strategic use of legal defense funds. In other words, it’s time
to go ahead and make a federal case of it. It certainly sounds like an
idea whose time has come.

The
worst part of the suppression of free speech on a college campus is
that it completely subverts the process of education itself. As William
F. Buckley asserted, “The antidote to bad speech is more speech.” If you
don’t like what someone else has to say, by all means, refute it
vociferously and eloquently, in your own words, at interminable length,
if you wish. That’s how you develop your rhetorical abilities and
persuade other people that your ideas have merit. Robert Frost once
observed that, “Education is the ability to listen to almost anything
without losing your temper.” If so, then the number of temper tantrums
erupting on campuses nationwide indicates that few are being truly
educated there.

The
back-and-forth, point-counterpoint that is at the heart of the
intellectual dialectic is foundational to the development of the
reasoning capacity in a sound-thinking person’s mind. It’s how we
sharpen our wits and come to understand the flaws of our own arguments.
Students certainly don’t hone their debating skills cowering in a “safe
zone” with their hands over their ears.

Without
someone to play devil’s advocate, all that exists is repetition and
memorization: the heart of indoctrination. This is precisely what Mario
Savio and his fellow Berkeley students railed against. You can’t silence
one side of an argument without silencing half of your own brain. The
true meaning of liberalism is being open to considering ideas. It’s time
to reclaim that spirit and launch a New Free Speech Movement on campus,
to roll back the excesses of the last one and fully realize its original promise.

Mario
Savio passed away in 1996, but his legacy deserves to be carried forth
by this generation of college students to a fuller, uncorrupted
expression. Where is today’s Mario Savio? Opportunity is
calling. Underclassmen today face a prime opportunity to make higher
education history again. Speak up, organize, assert your constitutional
rights, and maybe future generations will be reading about your
impassioned speeches in defense of the First Amendment 50 years from
now, and you can join the celebrated ranks of prior patriots like
Patrick Henry and Mario Savio.

Then, the dream of the original Free Speech Movement may actually be fully achieved.

Let
me conclude with Savio’s own prophetic concluding words, “-- we'll do
something which hasn't occurred at this University in a good long time!
We're going to have real classes up there! They're gonna be freedom
schools conducted up there! We're going to have classes on [the] 1st and
14th amendments!! We're gonna spend our time learning about the things
this University is afraid that we know! We're going to learn about
freedom up there, and we're going to learn by doing!!”